FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT FLORIDA KEYS - PAGE 3

A 65-year old Palm Beach Gardens man was charged with sexual assault of a minor for allegedly assaulting a 12-year old girl in the Florida Keys, the Monroe County Sheriff's Office said. Jose Aristizabal was taken into custody in Palm Beach Gardens on Monday and charged with nine felony counts related to the sexual assault. The girl, now 14, told her mother of the assault recently, detectives said. According to the Sheriff's Office, the assaults took place in May 2009, while the girl was staying with her family at Hawk's Cay Resort in Duck Key. Aristizabal is charged with four counts each of lewd and lascivious molestation and sexual battery.

Seven people whose boat sank off the Florida Keys were rescued Sunday morning after treading water for 20 hours, the Coast Guard said. An eighth person, a woman in her 80s, drowned. Among those rescued was a 4-year-old girl, said Coast Guard Petty Officer Nick Ameen. She had mild hypothermia. No one else reported medical problems besides exhaustion, Ameen said. For unknown reasons, their pleasure boat sank around noon Saturday near Marathon. A good Samaritan rescued three of the seven survivors, and called the Coast Guard to look for the others.

A Florida Keys woman is accused of defrauding her mother out of more than $10,000 in order to have a breast augmentation procedure and set up credit lines at retailers such as Victoria's Secret, Old Navy and Walmart. According to the Monroe County Sheriff's Office, Miriam Garmas, 34, used her mother's name and Social Security number to set up various credit accounts. In order to hide the accounts from her mother, Garmas had all the financial correspondence sent to her own address on Stock Island, investigators said.

Ovidio Cabrera, of Miami , was first spotted Saturday afternoon traveling at 124-mph in a 55-mph zone on a motorcycle in the Florida Keys, according to a news release from the Monroe County Sheriff's Office. The troopers called Sheriff's Office dispatchers to alert deputies to be on the lookout for the bald driver with no helmet, facial hair and extensive tattoos who was driving a 2009 green Kawasaki motorcycle -- with a woman passenger with a bright pink backpack on, the release sated.

You might say that these anglers not only had short grouper - they also seemed to be a few catfish short of a fish fry. A deputy on patrol near the Channel 5 Bridge in the Florida Keys saw a pontoon boat with five people on board. As the deputy approached the boat he got a bit chummy, asking them how the fishing was going, according to a news release from the Monroe County Sheriff's Office. The group all said it was going well. The deputy must of thought these South Florida city slickers were like a fish out of water in the Keys.

When a man driving through the parking lot of Sea Grape apartments last Sunday in Marathon stopped his car, another man, Raul Daniel Pavon, 27, allegedly grabbed his car door, jerked it open so violently that the door was damaged and then pulled the man out of his vehicle, according to a news release from the Monrow County Sheriff's Office. As Pavon began to push the man, threatening to give him a beatdown, the man's wife intervened. She was also pushed. Her mother saw what was happening and called 911. the release stated.

A Sheriff's Marine Patrol deputy, working with Fish and Wildlife officers, busted Ernesto Rua Pinera, 41, of Homestead, and Raudel Rubio, 36, of Marathon, after they were allegedly caught with 332 wrung tails, of which 304 were undersized, according to a news release from the Monroe County Sheriff's Office. The deputy spotted a boat just after 4 a.m. Sunday approaching shore at Marathon with no running lights. He then saw two men get off the boat carrying a large gray box, according to the release.

Goldilocks intruders have a certain modus operandi: They make themselves feel right at home -- inside other folk's homes -- without the homeowner's approval. The property manager of a Big Pine Key home called deputies after he noticed someone was inside a Big Pine Key home who did not belong there, according to a new release from the Monroe County Sheriff's Office. When a responding deputy arrived he heard someone running out the back of the home as he knocked on the door. A short time later the deputy found the intruders -- two women from Miami, Mariela Rosa Abarca, 27, and Janel Delani Vega, 22, according to the Sheriff's Office.

About 15 pilot whales were either stranded or in trouble Thursday night in shallow waters in the Lower Keys, according to Art Cooper, chairman of the Marine Mammal Conservancy. They were discovered Thursday evening at three locations on the Gulf of Mexico side of Cudjoe Key, a small island at about Mile Marker 23 of the Overseas Highway. Some reportedly were swimming under Fat Albert, the federal government's blimp that is tethered to the ground and used for surveillance around Mile Marker 17. One is believed to be a calf.

Jamie Arthur Goodman, a 55-year-old doc with two businesses in Islamorada -- the Keys Medical Center, a family practice medical clinic, and the Essence of the Phoenix, which is billed on its web site as an “Anti-Aging Regenerative Medicine, Laser Skin Care, and Body Wellness medical spa” -- is accused of scamming one of his patient out of $60,000, according to a news release from the Monroe County Sheriff's Office. Detectives said Goodman began treating the 45-year-old woman in 2005.